


Capriole

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Brothers, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1613723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This sort of comes from two lines of thought crossing--the first a result of a dialogue with Dormiensa, regarding Sherlock and athletics, when I got to thinking about riding and the Holmes Boys, who to me seem likely to have grown up with at least some of the "horsey set" activities of gymkhanas, hunts, small regional shows, etc. It would explain Sherlock's possession of a riding crop.... The second was thinking about Mycroft, his repeated hints of melancholy and broken heartedness, and a desire to at least play around the edges of that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Capriole

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dormiensa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dormiensa/gifts).



Anthea came to Baker Street without calling first. She walked up the stairs, ignoring the friendly chatter of Sherlock’s landlady—a nice woman, whom she’d spent time with on occasion during the hiatus, but not anyone she had time for right then. She knocked on the frame of the open door.

“Come in,” Sherlock shouted from his bedroom. She noticed he didn’t attempt to identify her from nothing more than her footsteps and her knock, or the trace of her perfume. She kept them too generic and changed things around too often for it to be that simple, and Sherlock knew how to palm an ace and fake having known when he came out.

As he did, face perfectly masking any surprise. “Mycroft has a message he couldn’t send by email or phone call?” He was dressed in a pair of drawstring pajama pants washed soft, with a t-shirt over, and a rich blue robe Anthea suspected had been given him by his brother. It was a Mycroft sort of gift, exactly the sort of proper, but generous gift he’d give his brother—a dollop of luxury and color Sherlock might not buy himself, with his off-the-rack jackets. The sort of thing a brother could give that someone like John Watson would not even think of…nor dare if he did.

She struggled to phrase an answer. Though she’d been working at it for hours—no, days—she failed again. She shrugged, and fell back on, “Something’s not right with him. I don’t know what. I can’t ask anyone else—it might put him at risk if I go asking around the agency. I came here.”

Sherlock frowned. “Ah.” She could see something move in his expression, but it was muted—almost as hard to read as Mycroft’s. No…today it was as difficult. She knew how to read the Holmeses, except when they chose to be unreadable.

“Not very helpful,” she said, choking back worry and frustration.

He grimaced. “I doubt I will be much help. It will pass.”

She arched an elegant, clean-plucked brow. “Pass?”

Sherlock turned away. “It always does.”

“What always does?”

“If he wanted you to know, you’d know,” he said, and opened his violin case.

She wanted to scream, “He’s broken, somehow. Broken spirit, broken heart, broken will. How do I bind it up? What kind of balm do I apply to a heartsick Holmes?” Instead she stayed silent.

Sherlock answered her unvoiced cry. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”  He drew the bow across the strings. His back was long and slim. He was an elegant silhouette, standing against the glare of the window.

“Try,” she growled.

He stopped and half-turned, the bow poised in mid-air like a wand or a baton. “What?” She could hear the bewilderment.

“Try,” she said again, then turned and left, refusing to see if it even registered.

His brother would reschedule a meeting with the heads of state of England’s nearest allies on a moment’s notice, if Sherlock were ill or injured. She didn’t want to watch Sherlock simply bring the bow back up to the violin, and stand there, unmoved.

He did, though. The music of the violin followed her down the stairs. She clutched her hands into fists, and just shook her head at Mrs. Hudson when the woman tried to talk to her.

She sometimes wondered why Mycroft bothered.

 

Mycroft was where Sherlock thought he’d be—more or less. Within three guesses, all contained within five acres of land. The dressage arena was cool, unheated, the sawdust of the arena dry and smelling of pine. Mycroft rode, mounted on a beautiful black Friesian, practicing a collected passage, the horse balanced to perfection, Mycroft seeming still as a statue in the saddle. Horse and rider were as one. Mycroft guided them through one testable skill after another—piafe, the extended and collected gaits, pirouette, flying changes. It was slow, steady work, most interesting if you knew what you watched, but beautiful even if you didn’t.

Sherlock, who loved dance, thought of it as silent ballet—horse and rider in a pas de deux.

Mycroft gathered his mount. It was a pretty thing, Sherlock thought. Black as midnight, with a streaming mane and tail and soft feathering on its legs. A gesture Sherlock couldn’t see, even though he expected it, even though he was looking for it, sent the horse into pasade then levade. Then, when Mycroft knew the horse was warmed and limber and moving well, he risked the capriole—the horse rose like Pegasus, forelegs tucked, hind-legs striking backward, then landing.

Mycroft’s free hand, holding the riding crop he so seldom used, patted the deep valley between the horse’s neck and shoulder, though the dance never stopped. Mycroft instead moved them back down, from quick to slow, from complicated to simple, until the horse simply walked, in perfect, collected grace, and Mycroft brought him to a stop.

He slipped from the animal’s back, then, taking time to stroke the damp neck, scratch behind silken ears that flipped and cocked. He offered something from his pocket—Sherlock, after years of his brother’s company, knew it would be carrot or apple or something else fresh and healthy from the manor kitchen. The horse leaned its great head against Mycroft’s chest, no doubt leaving black hairs and horse drool. Mycroft leaned back, and rested his face against the Rapunzel-long mane. Sherlock saw a hand slip into his pocket, and wasn’t surprised when a few minutes later a groom came in and led the animal away.

Only then did Mycroft come across the open arena to greet his brother, who leaned on the iron pipe-rail that edged the work space. “Well met,” he said. “What brings you out? You usually treat home like hellfire and brimstone, and avoid it at all costs.”

Sherlock shrugged. “I’d say I can read a calendar, but in truth, your PA is worried about you. When she brought it up… Well. I can read a calendar.”

Mycroft tipped his head, considered, then nodded. “How…unexpected. Of both of you. Still…” He leaned on his own side of the rail. “Belarius is my only dressage mount, right now, but I have a couple of hacks if you’d like to go ride the perimeter with me.”

“Later,” Sherlock said. Then, “Only one for dressage?”

“I have too little time for him, really,” Mycroft said, sadly. “If it weren’t for the team the stable master’s put together, he’d be sadly wasted and out of shape.”

“That would be a pity,” Sherlock said, thinking as much of Mycroft as of the horse. “You look good out there.”

“You could do as well,” Mycroft said.

“No,” Sherlock said, “I couldn’t. Me for the hounds and the hunt. Steeplechase. None of this fiddly stuff. Just thinking of it makes me claustrophobic.”

Mycroft snorted, for all the world like one of his horses. “In truth, the only time you really want to see a horse is when you’re tired of London, and you’re never tired of London.”

“Well, you do know what Johnson said—I’m not yet tired of life.”

“Johnson to the contrary, one can be tired of London without being suicidally inclined,” Mycroft said, tartly. He walked toward the gap in the railing, stripping off his riding gloves as he went. When Sherlock said nothing, he turned back, looking over his shoulder. “I’m not,” he said. “I never have been. You know that.”

“I know you won’t. What I don’t know is whether you wish to. I never have known.”

Mycroft stopped, eyes going distant. After far too long, he said, simply, “If I had any surety of heaven or hell, or any afterlife at all—I might. As it is—no. I shall wait my time, and settle for the lesser heaven of Belarius’ capriole.” He turned away again, walking steadily.

Sherlock’s temper, never patient or sweet, snapped out, kicking like Belarius in his capriole—sharp and direct. “Bugger that, you prat. That’s just maudlin.” He stalked down his own side of the rail, meeting Mycroft as he moved into the outer aisle. “You’re worrying your damned PA, Mycroft. That’s just pitiful. If you can’t summon up the energy to go out and live boldly, then at least don’t waste everyone else’s time _moping_. It’s…self-indulgent.”

Mycroft glared at him, eyes going narrow, but he didn’t argue.

“He died,” Sherlock said, as unwilling to say the name of the dead man as Mycroft. “You didn’t. Stop acting like you should have.”

“Says the man who refuses to love at all.”

“I don’t refuse any more,” Sherlock growled.

“Oh? Is there a happy announcement on the way?”

“Don’t be snide.”

“Just asking. Is there a name to go with this sentiment?”

“ _Names_. John. Mary. Molly. Lestrade. Janine. Mrs. Hudson.” He drew a breath. “You.”

Mycroft stopped where he was, black boots sending up a sudden spurt of sawdust as he did. He was silent for long seconds, then said, in a voice uncharacteristically small and hesitant, “…Oh….” Sherlock could hear the uncertainty—the stunned moment when the armor fell away and his brother stood open to any blow.

The mischief-maker in him was tempted. Such a moment to get in a perfect, steel-edged dig, comment on the reluctance, point out that Mycroft was last-named on the list, behind even Mrs. Hudson. Instead he said, in a growl-tiger voice, gruff and uncertain, “Yes, well. But you knew that, didn’t you?” in spite of the fact that both knew Mycroft almost certainly doubted far more often than he was sure.

Mycroft smiled, his face lighting with fond laughter. “Brother mine,” he said, hesitated looking for more words, then just repeated, “Brother mine.” He grinned his little, shy grin, the grin Sherlock remembered from as far back as memory went—his brother’s smile, unlike any other.

Sherlock huffed. “Oh, for God’s sake, Mycroft. Don’t do this. Come on—back to the house, eat too much for lunch, force me to go riding the perimeter. And…live, damn it. Or your PA is going to murder me in my sleep.”

Mycroft turned away, and Sherlock a noted his step was jauntier, his mood lifted. “She can, you know,” he said, conversationally. “Quite effectively, and without remorse.”

“Well the second part is true of almost anyone who knows me,” Sherlock said. “Barring—“

“Barring John, and Mary, and Molly, and Lestrade, and someone named Janine you really must tell me about, and Mrs. Hudson,” Mycroft said “And….me.”

“Oh, you’d kill me,” Sherlock said.

“Yes,” Mycroft chuckled. “But I’d regret it. I promise.”

“I’d make sure you did,” Sherlock said—but he didn’t offer to haunt Mycroft, who longed too deeply for the return of the dead. Instead he said, “Live. I’d rather you promised to live, Mike.”

“I have so far. I suspect I will continue to.”

“No, I don’t mean just keep on breathing. It’s time, damn it.”

Mycroft cracked open the door out onto the track leading to the mansion. He didn’t answer.


End file.
